Instead, LimeWire will likely be reborn as a copyright-friendly service, but the code will probably be rewritten from the ground up for that purpose, the source said.

PCMag.com was contacted by a source regarding LimeWire on Monday night, but could not independently verify the information. A spokeswoman for the company then refused to either confirm or deny the story, but said that Lime Wire was working to develop a "new music service."

The free, open-source Limewire Basic peer-to-peer program hit the Internet in 2001, tapping into the Gnutella decentralized peer-to-peer network to share a variety of legal and copyrighted files, including music. Since then, the service has attracted millions of users, although the tracker-based BitTorrent protocol has become arguably more popular, at least to download larger files. Lime Wire also sells LimeWire Pro, a version of the software that costs $34.95, but promises greater access to more sources and with optimized search results.

But in addition to sharing legally transferable files, the service also became a haven for piracy, at least according to the record labels.

The RIAA wanted the site shut down immediately, but the judge said on June 8 that LimeWire could remain open for at least another two weeks. At the time, Lime Wire said a permanent injunction "could hold back the creation of new digital-music technologies that Lime Wire is in the process of developing."

During that time, Lime Wire developed a digital music store with support from the recording industry, where Lime Wire sold individual tracks and albums directly to the consumer.

Behind the scenes, however, the company was working on a means to tap into the LimeWire network to provide what was described as a "copyright friendly" means of distributing music to the LimeWire user base via its network. That project still remains on track, the source said.

According to the source, however, a consent injunction was agreed to by the record labels and Lime Wire in June, stipulating that the company would turn off the LimeWire client by Oct. 8, if the copyright-friendly service was not up and running by that date. Lime Wire would also agree to pay a $5 million payment to the RIAA. That consent injunction has been sealed by the court, the source said.

Both sides later agreed to an extension, which expired on Tuesday, the source said.

Guarnaccia told PCMag.com Monday night that "there are definitely developments happening here," but that "things were not finalized."

In a statement, Lime Wire said, "We're hopeful that the music industry will seize the opportunity to work with LimeWire and bring a game-changing new music service to market in the future. This opportunity exists. If it comes to fruition, there is tremendous potential for all parties involved. There are two pieces that will define the launch of our new service. One is the development of our new music experience, and the second is working with the music industry," the company added.

"We tried bringing about another solution that would allow the technology to exist and preserve our network," Lime Wire said on Tuesday. "But, at this time we must honor the court's decision."
Guarnaccia said that Lime Wire was set to appear in court on January 17.

"Toxic version"

So how does a company "turn off" a peer-to-peer network, that, by its nature, remains decentralized?

"Over the past few months, part of the consent injunction stated that Lime Wire needed to build in stopgaps to make sure that could happen," the source said. "So people have been updating to a toxic version [of LimeWire]. It has a central switch that allows them to turn it on and off."

Gnutella clients establish peering connections across a few local leaf nodes, then out to "ultrapeers," which serve as more localized hubs, connecting to other ultrapeers, and in turn, to hundreds of leaf nodes across a number of hops.

Beginning with about version 4.18, LimeWire added the ability to send out messages to clients updating them with the location of their local peers, via startup scripts. It will be these startup scripts that will be disabled, the source said, largely isolating individual users.

"That will shut down perhaps 80 percent of the network," the source said.

With versions 5.5.10, released in June, Lime Wire added automatic updates, with a key stipulation; if an update is available and the user chooses to ignore it, the LimeWire client cannot be opened, the source said.

The hope for the settlement was that the RIAA would use LimeWire as the "on ramp to the new [copyright-friendly] system," the source said. Instead, they'll have to acquire the users in a different way, the source said, perhaps by making the user experience of the main LimeWire client less user-friendly.

Guarnaccia said that she couldn't comment on any additional "technical insights."

What then?

If LimeWire does succeed in turning off its network permanently, that doesn't mean the end of Gnutella clients. LimeWire is completely open source, and some third-party derivatives, like FrostWire, exist. The problem, however, is that LimeWire represents the "vast majority" of Gnutella clients, leaving just a small amount of content stored on FrostWire clients, the source said.

"If the content isn't there, people won't continue to use it," the source said.

But it's also true that users may simply jump ship en masse to a new client, making the LimeWire shutdown largely irrelevant. "And that's part of the stupidity of the labels, and shutting LimeWire down, that they had such an opportunity to convert LimeWire members to a paying society," the source said. "It's really a self-destructive effort."

About the Author

Mark Hachman Mark joined ExtremeTech in 2001 as the news editor, after rival CMP/United Media decided at the time that online news did not make sense in the new millennium.
Mark stumbled into his career after discovering that writing the great American novel did not pay a monthly salary, and that his other possible career choice, physics, require... See Full Bio

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